joining us now from northern syria, our own arwa damon. arwa, we've now learned the syrian military is actually mixing up various recipes for poison gas. what are the rebels, the civilians there on the ground in northern syria where you are telling you about this? >> reporter: this is a civilian population that's not been able to defend itself against bullets and bombs. so when it comes to chemical warfare, they have no defense system whatsoever. some of the rebels and the activists do in fact believe that the stronger the strangle hold gross on regime forces, the greater the likelihood it is that the government is going to employ these chemical weapons. in fact, not far from aleppo is one of the main suspected places, a weapons manufacturing facility that fighters are telling us is one of the areas that the regime is focusing on defending and is one of the areas where there are great suspicions and some intel saying that is perhaps one of the sites that the regime is in fact experimenting when it comes to chemical weapons. so people are t